"I retire from human
society and seek that of the animals--and for this reason: I know almost no
human being who is lazy enough to keep me company in such a mood, for I possess
the priceless gift of being able, when in a state of great contentment, to shut
off my higher thinking powers completely, and this is the essential condition
for perfect peace of mind.

When, on a hot summer
day, I swim across the Danube and lie in a dreamy backwater of the great river,
like a crocodile in the mud, amongst scenery that shows not the slightest sign
of the existence of human civilization, then I sometimes achieve that miraculous
state which is highest goal of oriental sages. Without going to sleep, my higher
centres dissolves into a strange at-oneness with surrounding nature; my thoughts
stand still, time ceases to mean anything and, when the sun begins to sink and
the cool of the evening warns me that i have still another three and half miles
to swim home, I do not know whether seconds or years have passed since I crawled
out on the muddy bank.

This animal nirvana is an unequalled panacea for mental strain, true balm for
the mind of hurried, worried, modern man, which has been rubbed sore in so many
places. I do not always succeed in achieving this healing return to the
thoughtless happiness of pre-human paradise but I am most likely to do so in the
company of an animal which is still a rightful participant of it."

ManMeetsDog, beginning of chapter, Dog Days, pp 143-44

Margaret Mead: Watching
Konrad Lorenz be simultaneously a bird and a worm, is one of the really
magnificent things in the world. You've seen that, haven't you, when he's
describing a bird catching a worm, and he's both? Talk about the whole system,
there it is.

Gregory Bateson: One of the things I've always regretted is that I didn't film
him lecturing in Hawaii. One could've, I think. Lorenz is an Aurignacian.

SB: How do you mean? "

Bateson: I mean that he is identified with animals. Aurig-nacians are the people
who did the cave paintings, the good ones. Lorenz goes to the blackboard and
there is a live dog, hesitating between attacking and retreating. He takes the
eraser, and he wipes the tail off, changes the angle by ten degrees, and
flattens out the hair on the back of the neck, and he says, "That dog's going to
run." He sticks it the other
way, and "That dog's going to attack." And he is the dog while he's talking
about it.

And this goes for cichlid
fishes, bees, any goddamn thing. And then, in the final lecture he gave in
Hawaii, he got all mixed up, you know, the way scientists do, with physics and
the Einsteinian universe, and his body got twisted, as he started to talk about
the Einsteinian universe where the straight lines are not straight anymore.
That's what I wish I had on the camera. The others all think this is very unfair
you know, he has all of this information that they simply don't have.

On Aggression, Chapter XII

On the Virtue of
Scientific Humility

I may claim that the contents of the
preceding chapters are natural science: the recorded facts are verified, as far
as it is possible to say of the results of a science as young as comparative
ethology. Now, however, we leave the record of facts elicited by observations
and experiments on the aggressive behaviour of animals and turn to the question
of whether they can teach us something applicable to man and useful in
circumventing the dangers arising from his aggressive drives.

There are people who see in this question
an insult to human dignity. All too willingly man sees himself as the centre of
the universe, as something not belonging to the rest of nature but standing
apart as a different and higher being. Many people cling to this error and
remain deaf to the wisest command ever given by a sage, the famous 'Know
thyself' inscribed in the temple of Delphi. What keeps people from listening to
it? There are three obstacles, all of them motivated by strong emotions. The
first is easily overcome by the man of insight; the second is at least
honourable, in spite of its harmful effects; the third is understandable from
the standpoint of cultural history and is therefore forgivable, but it is the
most difficult to remove. All three are inseparably bound up and shot through
with a most dangerous human quality, of which the proverb says that it goes
before a fall: pride. I will now discuss these obstacles and try to show in what
manner they are harmful, and then I will do my best to contribute towards their
elimination.

The first obstacle is the most primitive.
It hinders self-knowledge in inhibiting man's awareness of his own evolutionary
origin. Its irrational quality and its stubborn tenacity are paradoxically
derived from the great likeness which our nearest animal relations bear to us.
If people did not know the chimpanzee they would be more easily convinced of
their own origin. An inexorable law of perception prevents us from seeing in the
ape, particularly in the chimpanzee, an animal like other animals, and makes us
see in its face the human physiognomy. From this point of view, measured by
human standards, the chimpanzee of course appears as something horrible, a
diabolical caricature of ourselves. In looking at the gorilla or the orang-utan,
which are less closely related to us, our judgement is correspondingly less
distorted. The heads of the old males may look to us like bizarre devils' masks,
impressive and even aesthetically appealing. However, we cannot feel like this
about the chimpanzee: he is irresistibly funny and at the same time as common,
as vulgar, as no other animal but a debased human being can ever be. This
subjective impression is not altogether wrong: there are reasons for supposing
that the common ancestor of man and the chimpanzee stood not lower but
considerably higher than the chimpanzee does today. Absurd though the
contemptuous attitude of man to the chimpanzee may be in itself, its strong
emotional content has nevertheless misled several scientists into building up
entirely unfounded theories about the origin of man: his evolution from animals
is not disputed, but his close relationship to the repulsive chimpanzee is
either passed over in a few logical skips or circumvented by sophistic detours.

The chimpanzee, however, is irresistibly
funny just because he is so similar to us. What is worse is that in the narrow
confinement of zoological gardens, adult chimpanzees degenerate much in the same
way as human beings would under comparable circumstances, and give an impression
of real dissoluteness and depravity. Even the normal chimp observed in perfect
health gives the impression not of an extremely highly evolved animal but rather
of a desperate and debased human being.

The second obstacle to self-knowledge is
our reluctance to accept the fact that our own behaviour obeys the laws of
natural causation. Bernhard Hassenstein has called this attitude the
'anti-causal value judgement'. The reluctance of many people to recognise the
causal determination of all natural phenomena, human behaviour included,
undoubtedly comes from the justifiable wish to possess a free will and to feel
that our actions are determined not by fortuitous causes but by higher aims.

A third great obstacle to human
self-knowledge is- at least in our Western cultures - a heritage of idealistic
philosophy. It stems from the dichotomy of the world into the external world of
things, which to idealistic thought is devoid of values, and the inner world of
human thought and reason to which alone values are attributed. This division
appeals to man's spiritual pride. It supports him in his reluctance to accept
the determination of his own behaviour by natural laws. How deeply it has
penetrated into accepted ways of thinking can be seen from the alteration in
meaning of the words 'idealist' and 'realist', which originally signified
philosophic attitudes but today imply moral value judgements. We must realize
how common it has become in Western, particularly German, thought to consider
that whatever can be explained by the laws of nature is automatically devoid of
higher values. To anybody thinking in this way explanation means devaluation.

I must here guard against the possible
reproach that I am preaching against the three obstacles to human self-knowledge
because they contradict my own scientific and philosophic views: I am not
arguing against the rejection of the doctrine of evolution only because I am a
convinced Darwinian; my opposition to the belief that natural explanation
depreciates whatever it explains is not motivated by the fact that I happen to
be professionally engaged in causal analysis; nor do I object to certain
consequences of idealistic thought because my own epistemological attitude is
that of hypothetical realism. I have better reasons. Science is often accused of
having brought terrible dangers upon man by giving him too much power over
nature. This accusation would be justified only if scientists were guilty of
having neglected man himself as a subject for research. The danger to modern man
arises not so much from his power of mastering natural phenomena as from his
powerlessness to control sensibly what is happening today in his own society. I
maintain that this powerlessness is entirely the consequence of the lack of
human insight into the causation of human behaviour. What I intend to show is
that the insight necessary to control our own social behaviour is blocked by the
three pride-inspired obstacles to self-knowledge.

These obstacles prevent the causal
analysis of all those processes in the life of man which he regards as being of
particular value, in other words those processes of which he is proud. It cannot
be stressed enough: the fact that the functions of our digestive system are well
known and that, as a result of this knowledge, medicine, particularly intestinal
surgery, saves many thousands of human lives annually, is entirely due to the
fortunate circumstance that the functions of these organs do not evoke
particular awe or reverence. If, on the other hand, we are powerless against the
pathological disintegration of our social structure, and if, armed with atomic
weapons, we cannot control our aggressive behaviour any more sensibly than any
animal species, this deplorable situation is largely due to our arrogant refusal
to regard our own behaviour as equally subject to the laws of nature and
accessible to causal analysis.

Science is not to blame for men's lack of
self-knowledge. Giordano Bruno went to the stake because he told his fellow men
that they and their planet were only a speck of dust in a cloud of countless
other specks. When Charles Darwin discovered that men are descended from animals
they would have been glad to kill him, and there was certainly no lack of
attempts to silence him. When Sigmund Freud attempted to analyse the motives of
human social behaviour and to explain its causes from the
subjective-psychological side, but with the method of approach of true natural
science, he was accused of irreverence, blind materialism and even pornographic
tendencies. Humanity defends its own self-esteem with all its might, and it is
certainly time to preach humility and try seriously to break down all
obstructions to self-knowledge.

I will begin by attacking the resistance
to the doctrine of Charles Darwin, and it may be considered an encouraging sign
for the gradual spread of scientific education that today I no longer have to
combat those who rose up against the findings of Giordano Bruno. I think I know
a simple method of reconciling people to the fact that they are part of nature
and have themselves originated by natural evolution without any infringement of
natural laws: one need only show them the beauty and greatness of the universe,
and the awe-inspiring laws that govern it. Surely nobody who knows enough about
the phylogenetic evolution of the world of organisms can feel any inner
resistance to the knowledge that he himself owes his existence to this greatest
of all natural phenomena. I will not discuss the probability or rather the
certainty of evolution, a certainty which by far surpasses that of all our
historical knowledge. Everything we know confirms the fact of evolution; it
possesses, too, everything that makes a 'myth of creation' valuable; utter
convincingness, entrancing beauty and awe-inspiring greatness.

Anyone who understands this cannot
possibly be repelled by Darwin's recognition of the fact that we have a common
origin with animals, nor by Freud's realisation that we are still driven by the
same instincts as our prehuman ancestors. On the contrary, this knowledge
inspires a new feeling of respect for the functions of reason and moral
responsibility which first came into the world with man and which, provided he
does not blindly and arrogantly deny the existence of his animal inheritance,
give him the power to control it.

A further reason why some people still
resist the doctrine of evolution is the great respect we human beings have for
our ancestors. To descend from, means, literally, to come down, and even in
Roman law it was customary to put the ancestor uppermost in the pedigree and to
draw the family tree branching downwards. The fact that a human being has only
two parents but 256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grand-parents does not
appear in such pedigrees even if they extend to many generations. We avoid
mentioning this multitude because among so many ancestors we would not find
enough of whom we could be proud. According to some authors, the term 'descent'
may derive from the fact that in ancient times man was fond of tracing his
origin to the gods. That the family tree of life grows not from above downwards
but from below upwards escaped man's notice until Darwin's time; thus the word
'descent' stands for the opposite of what it means, unless we wish to take it
literally that our forefathers, in their time, came down from the trees. This
they actually did, though as we know today, a long time before they became human
beings.

The terms 'development' and 'evolution'
are nearly as inadequate as 'descent'. They too came into use at a time when we
knew nothing of the creative processes of the origin of species and only knew
about the origin of individuals from eggs or seeds. A chick literally develops
from an egg and a sunflower from a seed: that is nothing originates from the
germ that was not already formed inside it.

The growth of the great family tree of
life is quite different. Though the ancestral form is the indispensable
prerequisite for the origin of its more highly developed descendants, their
evolution can in no way be predicted from the characters of the ancestor. The
fact that birds evolved from dinosaurs or man from apes is a historically unique
achievement of evolution. By laws that govern every living being evolution has a
general trend to the higher but in all its details is determined by so-called
chance, that is by innumerable collateral chains of causation which in principle
can never be completely apprehended. It is by 'chance' in this sense that from
primitive forebears in Australia eucalyptus trees and kangaroos originated, and
in Europe and Asia oak trees and man. The newly evolved form of life is an
achievement, and its characters cannot be predicted from those of its forebear;
that is, in the large majority of cases, something higher than the latter The
naive value-judgement expressed in the words 'lower animals' is for every
unbiased person an inevitable necessity of thinking and feeling.

The scientist who considers himself
absolutely 'objective' and believes that he can free himself from the compulsion
of the 'merely' subjective should try - only in imagination of course to kill in
succession a lettuce, a fly, a frog, a guineapig, a cat, a dog, and finally a
chimpanzee. He will then be aware how increasingly difficult murder becomes as
the victim's level of organisation rises. The degree of inhibition against
killing each one of these beings is a very precise measure for the considerably
different values that we cannot help attributing to lower and higher forms of
life. To any man who finds it equally easy to chop up a live dog and a live
lettuce I would recommend suicide at his earliest convenience!

The principle that science should be
indifferent to values must not lead to the belief that evolution, that most
wonderful of all chains of naturally explicable processes, is not capable of
creating new values. That the origin of a higher form of life from a simpler
ancestor means an increase in values is a reality as undeniable as that of our
own existence.

None of our western languages has an
intransitive verb to do justice to the increase of values produced by very
nearly every step in evolution. One cannot possibly call it development when
something new and higher arises from an earlier stage which does not contain the
constituent properties for the new and higher being. Fundamentally this applies
to each bigger step in the genesis of the world of organisms, including the
first step, the origin of life, and the most recent one - the origin of man from
the Anthropoid.

In spite of all epoch-making and
inspiring new discoveries in biochemistry and virology, the origin of life is
still the most puzzling of all natural phenomena. The difference between the
processes of life and those occurring in non-living matter can only be defined
by what Bernhard Hassenstein has termed an 'injunctive' definition. This means
that to define the concept of life it is necessary to enumerate a number of
constituent characteristics, none of which, taken by itself, constitutes life,
but which, taken all together, in their summation and interaction, do indeed
represent the essence of life. For each of the processes of life, such as
metabolism, growth, propagation and so on, an analogy can be found in inorganic
matter, but all together can only be found in the living protoplasm. We are thus
justified in maintaining that life processes are chemical and physical
processes, and as such there is no doubt that fundamentally there is a natural
explanation for them. No miracle is required to explain their peculiarities, for
these are adequately explained by the complicated nature of molecular and other
structures It is wrong, however, to assert that life processes are essentially
chemical and physical processes. This assertion, though often made, contains
unnoticed a false value judgement. The very 'essence' of life processes is that
combination of characteristics which constitutes their "injunctive"
definition, and it is with regard to these very characteristics that life
processes are emphatically not what we ordinarily mean when we speak of chemical
or physical processes. By virtue of the molecular structure of the living matter
in which they take place the processes of life fulfil a great number of very
particular functions, such as self-regulation, self-preservation, acquisition
and storage of information and, above all, reproduction of the structures
essential for these functions. These, though in principle causally explicable,
cannot take place in other structurally less complex matter.

In the world of organisms the relation of
every higher life form to the lower one from which it originated is
fundamentally the same as the relation of the processes and structures of life
to those of the non-living. It would be a gross misrepresentation to say that
the bird's wing is 'nothing but' a reptilian forelimb, or still worse, to say
that man is 'nothing but' an ape. Indeed he is one, but he is much more besides:
he is essentially more.

A sentimental misanthropist coined the
often cited aphorism 'The more I see of human beings, the more I like animals".
I maintain the contrary: only the person who knows animals, including the
highest and most nearly related to ourselves, and who has gained insight into
evolution, will be able to apprehend the unique position of man. We are the
highest achievement reached so far by the great constructors of evolution. We
are their 'latest' but certainly not their last word. The scientist must not
regard anything as absolute, not even the laws of pure reason. He must remain
aware of the great fact, discovered by Heraclitus, that nothing whatever really
remains the same even for one moment, but that everything is perpetually
changing. To regard man, the most ephemeral and rapidly evolving of all species,
as the final and unsurpassable achievement of creation, especially at his
present-day particularly dangerous and disagreeable stage of development, is
certainly the most arrogant and dangerous of all untenable doctrines. If I
thought of man as the final image of God, I should not know what to think of
God. But when I consider that our ancestors, at a time fairly recent in relation
to the earth's history, were perfectly ordinary apes, closely related to
chimpanzees, I see a glimmer of hope. It does not require very great optimism to
assume that from us human beings something better and higher may evolve. Far
from seeing in man the irrevocable and unsurpassable image of God, I assert -
more modestly and, I believe, in greater awe of the Creation and its infinite
possibilities- that the long-sought missing link between animals and the really
humane being is ourselves!

The first great obstacle to human
self-knowledge, the reluctance to believe in our evolution from animals, is
based, as I have tried to show, on ignorance or misunderstanding of the essence
of organic creation. Fundamentally at least, it should be possible to remove
this obstacle by teaching and learning. Similar means should help to remove the
second obstacle, now to be discussed, the antipathy towards causal
determination; but in this case the misunderstanding is far more difficult to
clear up. Its root is the basically erroneous belief that a process which is
causally determined cannot at the same time be goal-directed. Admittedly there
are countless processes in the universe which are not goal-directed, and in
these cases the question 'What for?' must remain unanswered, unless we are
determined to find an answer at any price, in measureless overestimation of the
importance of man, as for instance, if we explain the rising of the moon as a
switching on of night illumination for our especial benefit. There is, however,
no process to which the question of causes cannot be applied.

As already stated in Chapter III, the
question 'What is it for?' only makes sense where the great constructors - or a
living constructor constructed by them - have been at work. Only where parts of
a systemic whole have become specialised, by division of labour, for different
functions, each completing the other, does the question 'What is it for?' make
any sense. This holds good for life processes, as also for those lifeless
structures and functions which the living being makes use of for its own
purposes, for instance, man-made machines. In these cases the question 'What is
it for?' is not only relevant but absolutely necessary. We could not understand
the cause of the cat's sharp claws if we had not first found out that their
special function was catching mice.

At the beginning of Chapter VI, on the
great parliament of instincts, we have already said that the answering of the
question 'What is it for ?' does not rule out the question of the cause. How
little the two questions preclude each other can be shown by a simple analogy. I
am driving through the countryside in my old car, to give a lecture in a distant
town, and I ponder on the usefulness of my car, the goals or aims which are so
well served by its construction, and it pleases me to think how all this
contributes to achieve the purpose of my journey. Suddenly the motor coughs once
or twice and peters out. At this stage I am painfully aware that the reason for
my journey does not make my car go; I am learning the hard way that aims or
goals are not causes. It will now be well for me to concentrate exclusively on
the natural causes of the car's workings, and to find out at what stage the
chain of their causation was so unpleasantly interrupted.

Medicine, 'queen of applied sciences',
furnishes us even better examples of the erroneousness of the view that
purposiveness and causality preclude each other. No 'life purpose', no
'whole-making factor' and no sense of imperative obligation can help the
unfortunate patient with acute appendicitis, but even the youngest hospital
surgeon can help him if he has rightly diagnosed the cause of the trouble. The
appreciation of the fact that life processes are directed at aims or goals, and
the realisation of the other fact that they are, at the same time, determined by
causality, not only do not preclude each other but they only make sense in
combination. If man did not strive towards goals, his questions as to causes
would have no sense; if he has no insight into cause and effect, he is powerless
to guide effects towards determined goals, however rightly he may have
understood the meaning of these goals.

This relation between the purposive and
the causal aspects of life processes seems to me quite obvious, but evidently
many people are under the illusion of their incompatibility. A classic example
of how even a great mind can be a victim of this illusion is seen in the works
of W. McDougall, the founder of 'purposive psychology'. In his book, Outline
of Psychology, he rejects every causal physiological explanation of animal
behaviour, with one exception: he explains the misfunctioning of the
light-compass-orientation, which causes insects to fly at night into flames, by
so-called tropisms, or causally analysed orientation mechanisms.

Probably the reason why people are so
afraid of causal considerations is that they are terrified lest insight into the
causes of earthly phenomena could expose man's free will as an illusion. In
reality the fact that I have a will is as undeniable as the fact of my
existence. Deeper insight into the physiological concatenation of causes of my
own behaviour cannot in the least alter the fact that I will but it can alter
what I will.

Only on very superficial consideration
does free will seem to imply that 'we can want what we will' in complete
lawlessness, though this thought may appeal to those who flee as in
claustrophobia from causality. We must remember how the theory of indeterminism
of microphysical phenomena, the 'acausal' quantum physics, was avidly seized and
on its foundations hypotheses built up to mediate between physical determinism
and belief in free will, though the only freedom thereby left to the will was
the lamentable liberty of the fortuitously cast die. Nobody can seriously
believe that free will means that it is left entirely to the will of the
individual, as to an irresponsible tyrant, to do or not do whatever he pleases.
Our freest will underlies strict moral laws, and one of the reasons for our
longing for freedom is to prevent our obeying other laws than these. It is
significant that the anguished feeling of not being free is never evoked by the
realisation that our behaviour is just as firmly bound to moral laws as
physiological processes are to physical ones. We are all agreed that the
greatest and most precious freedom of man is identical with the moral laws
within him. Increasing knowledge of the natural causes of his own behaviour can
certainly increase a man's faculties and enable him to put his free will into
action, but it can never diminish his will. If, in the impossible case of an
utopian complete and ultimate success of causal analysis, man should ever
achieve complete insight into the causality of earthly phenomena, including the
workings of his own organism, he would not cease to have a will but it would be
in perfect harmony with the incontrovertible lawfulness of the universe, the Weltvernunft of the Logos. This idea is foreign only to our present-day
western thought; it was quite familiar to ancient Indian philosophy and to the
mystics of the middle ages.

I now come to the third great obstacle to
human self-knowledge, to the belief- deeply rooted in our western culture - that
what can be explained in terms of natural science has no values. This belief
springs from an exaggeration of Kant's values-philosophy, the consequence of the
idealistic dichotomy of the world into the external world of things and the
internal laws of human reason. As already intimated, fear of causality is one of
the emotional reasons for the high values set on the unfathomable, but other
unconscious factors are also involved. The behaviour of the ruler, the
father-figure, whose essential features include an element of arbitrariness and
injustice, is unaccountable. God's decree is inscrutable. Whatever can be
explained by natural causes can be controlled, and with its obscurity it loses
most of its terror. Benjamin Franklin made of the thunderbolt, the instrument of
Zeus's unaccountable whim, an electric spark against which the lightning
conductors of our houses can protect us. The unfounded fear that nature might be
desecrated by causal insight forms the second chief motive of people's fear of
causality. Hence there arises a further obstacle to science, and this is all the
stronger the greater a man's sense of the aesthetic beauty and awe-inspiring
greatness of the universe and the more beautiful and venerable any particular
natural phenomenon seems to him.

The obstacle to research arising from
these unfortunate associations is the more dangerous since it never crosses the
threshold of consciousness. If questioned, such people would profess in all
sincerity to be supporters of scientific research, and within the limits of a
circumscribed special field they may even be great scientists. But
subconsciously they are firmly resolved not to carry their natural explanations
beyond the limits of the awe-inspiring. Their error does not lie in the false
assumption that some things are inexplorable: nobody knows so well as the
scientist that there are limits to human understanding, but he is always aware
that we do not know where these limits lie. Kant says, 'Our observation and
analysis of its phenomena penetrate to the depth of nature. We do not know how
far this will lead us in time.' The obstacle to scientific research produced by
the attitude here discussed consists in setting a dogmatic border between the
explorable and what is considered beyond exploration. Many excellent observers
have so great a respect for life and its characteristics that they draw the line
at its origin. They accept a special life force, force vitale, a
direction-giving, whole-making factor which, they consider, neither requires nor
permits an explanation. Others draw the line where they feel that human dignity
demands a halt before any further attempts at natural explanation.

The attitude of the true scientist
towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me
in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist;
Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Sciences with Goethe's
words, 'It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the
explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable.' After the last word he
hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, 'No,
not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly !' One could even define a true
scientist by his ability to feel undiminished awe for the explorable that he has
explored; from this arises his ability to want to explore the apparently
inexplorable: he is not afraid of desecrating nature by causal insight. Never
has natural explanation of one of its marvellous processes exposed nature as a
charlatan who has lost the reputation of his sorcery; natural causal
associations have always turned out to be grander and more awe-inspiring than
even the most imaginative mythical interpretation. The true scientist does not
need the inexplorable, the supernatural, to evoke his reverence: for him there
is only one miracle, namely, that everything, even the finest flowerings of
life, have come into being without miracles; for him the universe would lose
some of its grandeur if he thought that any phenomenon even reason and moral
sense in noble-minded human beings, could be accounted for only by an
infringement of the omnipresent and omnipotent laws of one universe.

Nothing can better express the feelings
of the scientist towards the great unity of the laws of nature than in Immanuel
Kant's words: 'Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing awe: the
stars above me and the moral law within me.' Admiration and awe did not prevent
the great philosopher from finding a natural explanation for the laws of the
heavens, indeed an explanation based on their evolutionary origin. Would he, who
did not yet know of the evolution of the world of organisms, be shocked that we
consider the moral law within us not as something given, a priori, but
as something which has arisen by natural evolution, just like the laws of the
heavens?